Let me quote the 10 verses before that portion of Genesis.....
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters.
3 And God said: “Let there be light.” Then there was light. 4 After that God saw that the light was good, and God began to divide the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, but the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.
6 Then God said: “Let there be an expanse between the waters, and let there be a division between the waters and the waters.” 7 Then God went on to make the expanse and divided the waters beneath the expanse from the waters above the expanse. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
9 Then God said: “Let the waters under the heavens be collected together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, but the collecting of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good."
In the first verse there is a simple statement that the entire universe had a beginning. There is no time frame connecting verse 1 and what follows. This allows for an old earth, created long before its preparation for habitation began.
Verse 2 begins by describing a desolate planet perhaps shrouded in darkness by cloud cover, yet God's first declaration was "Let there be light". So right from the first creative "day" there was night and day as we would expect of a rotating planet. There was obviously enough visible light to sustain the plant life that followed.
So light appeared before anything else. (It does not necessarily mean that the heavenly bodies were clearly discernible at that point. The beginning of the fourth day describes that.)
God then divided the waters covering the planet. He divided the waters above the atmosphere from the waters below, making some kind of water canopy that would have made the earth like a hothouse, keeping it moist and humid....ideal conditions for life to thrive. Geologists know that the earth at one time enjoyed a uniform climate.
When we think of the enormous volumes of water held in clouds that can cause flooding, when it falls as rain, it is not hard to imagine that God could suspend a water canopy above the atmosphere.
The "heaven" he describes is not the heaven where God lives, but a word that describes where birds and other creatures fly.
Next the dry land was separated out from the oceans.
One can imagine the kind of power needed to force land masses to come up out of the oceans. Many islands that exist today are the result of volcanic and earthquake activity.
So with the dry land and a rich moist atmosphere, vegetation was said to be the first living specimens to exist on earth. God doesn't mention bacteria, since it was beyond man's capability to see them back then. Vegetation ensured that all land dwelling creatures that fed on grasses had plenty to eat long before they arrived.
Please don't quote scripture to a Bible teacher.....unless you really know what you're talking about....which you clearly don't.
